CLASSICS (Bonus Episode): Dr. Meldrum Returns!

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These
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Speaker 2 (00:13):
It five star and me.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Greatest on Yesterday and listening watching Lin always keep its watching.
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay. Hey, Bobo,
this is a special episode. We have brought back doctor
Jeff Meldrim for our two hundredth episode. He was our
guest on our one hundredth episode, so we figured every

(00:40):
one hundred episodes we can subject doctor Meldrim to Cliff
and Bobo for an hour or so. So Jeff, thank
you very very much for coming back for our second
one hundredth episode, our two hundredth episode. We really appreciate
your time.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Oh I'm honored, privileged. Yeah, thank you very much for
the invitation.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hey, Jeff cool, Well, you know, I've got a wholelistic
questions and things we can talk about, and if there's
anything you want to talk about, of course we want
you to jump into. But you know, you've become the
scientific figurehead in a lot of ways, in the same
way that doctor Krantz was for so long, and you
knew doctor Krantz, of course, but he was wasn't he
as an osteologist. Wasn't his specialty bones.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
He was a classic physical anthropologist, and so that included
a number of disciplines that he published in regularly. He
was a paleoanthropologist, so he worked with the both the
discovery of and identification and analysis of fossil hominin bones,

(01:45):
skeletal remains, and so also as a classical physical anthropologist,
I'm sure he did teach the Human Osteology course, which
is an in depth treatment of the skeletal system of
the human species and for both evolutionary but also archaeological objectives.

(02:09):
He was also very talented anatomist and applied that talent
to forensic reconstructions of crania from partial remains. So his
Gigantopitheicis skull is an example of that. He also did,
you know, the only kind of working model of what

(02:31):
meganthropists might have looked like based on its very large
and robust mandible remains. So based on the correlation of
form and function, he could take a few bits and
estimate what the remainder of the skull may have looked like.

(02:53):
And I think he you know, exhibited some real talent
and insight in that respect. He was kind of a
renaissance man in many ways.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, almost like a generalist in a way, it sounds like.
And the reason I thought he was an osteologist is
because several of the people I've met of my own
age group who took classes from him apparently all took
osteology classes.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Sure, that's a pretty standard fair in an anthropological curriculum.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Now, now you brought up meganthropists, of course, and I
want to touch base on that in a little while.
But now contrasts that with your own field of study,
because you know, doctor Krantz really laid a foundation for
all scientists who are going to come after him. And
right now you're standing on that shoulder, on those set
of shoulders. But you've been able to have been able
to expand on what doctor Krantz did because of your

(03:44):
own specified study area.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
So how do you differ exactly?

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Well, I came at physical anthropology from a slightly different perspective.
At the time I entered into Grat graduate school, there
was rather a glut of anthropologists and or, at least
maybe better way to say, it was a dearth of
openings for employment and at in academic positions, and so

(04:15):
one an alternate pathway. Instead of the classical anthropological degree
that included the disciplines the subdisciplines of archaeology, social, cultural linguistics,
and physical I instead was a cohort at an institution

(04:36):
where physical anthropologists had been recruited into departments of anatomy
at medical schools to teach human gross anatomy in the
health professions programs in medical school, physical therapy school, and
so forth. And so my degree was actually an anatomical
sciences So rather than having with an emphasis with an

(04:57):
emphasis in physical anthropology, so rather than having the classic
for sub discipline anthropological training, which would really better suit
me for employment in an anthropology department, I got this
degree which then afforded me the opportunity to teach human

(05:20):
gross anatomy regional gross anatomy at the graduate level in
medical schools and there. Like I said, there were programs
like that that were popping up in various places, and
Sunny Stonybrook was one, Duke was one where I did
a post doc, and others Johns Hopkins, UCLA and other schools.

(05:43):
But anyway, so it was a little different. So I
basically had the first two years of medical school elbow
to elbow with one hundred and twenty medical students. You know,
I think there were six of us in my cohort
of anthropology students. And when then subsequently, as those medical

(06:04):
students would go into more and more clinical courses, we
would go into classes in evolutionary biology, in osteology, in
comparative primate anatomy, and so forth, and so more of
the basic sciences that touched on anthropology and ecology and evolution.

(06:28):
And so it was a great experience. I mean, it
was really it was a tough program though. I mean,
of the six, I think only two of us completed
the program.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
What was it around this time that you became interested
in bipedalism and the anatomy of feet or it sounds
at some point or another you kind of zeroed in
on those particular aspects.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
You're right, No, you're absolutely right, And in fact, that's
what motivated me to go to this particular program. The
faculty there had published this seminal work called the Locomotive
Anatomy of Austrolopithicus a forensis that was published in the
American Journal of physical anthropology, and it was just a

(07:14):
quite exhaustive treatment of the skeletal remains attributed to this
early bipedal hominin. And it was that, you know, that
that latent interest in bipedalism, which was probably initially seeded
by the interest in Bigfoot, you know, another bipedal primate,

(07:36):
that that motivated me to pursue that. And you know,
as you go along, your opportunities across your path that
that afford the chance to kind of branch out a
little bit and do some different things as well. And
so I mean along the way, for example, I got
interested in locomotive behavior. You're in primates, both living and fossil,

(08:02):
much more broadly than just human bipedalism actually, and I
would note that it's a kind of a tight not
a closed shop, but it's a it's a narrow niche
because of the rarity of hominine fossils. So really, unless
your professor was actually had access to the to the

(08:27):
fossil sites and was participating in the discovery of new material,
you rarely had the chance to do any of the
initial examination, analysis, and so forth study of those fossils.
So I had to kind of come at bipedalism from
from the side door, you know, through through the mud
room and back into the up the hallway. And so

(08:50):
I was actually my doctoral dissertation was on terrestrial adaptations
in in in monkeys, in African monkeys and looking at
adaptations to terrestrial quadrupedalism, and then I could compare and
contrast that from you know, from a more theoretical practical

(09:13):
perspective with bipedalism. And it was actually a very effective
way because those features that were held in common were
those that were common to walking on the ground versus
clamoring and climbing in the trees. And then those that
were distinctive between bipeds and quadrupeds were those features that

(09:36):
were unique to the adaptations for walking on two legs.
So anyway, so along the way I dabbled in I
got interested in South American primate evolution because of the
again the opportunity of working with my mentor in the field,
and then on another occasion, when I was doing a
post doc at Duke, the opportunity to dabble in some

(10:01):
DNA sequencing and approaching the reconstruction of the phylogeny or
family tree in this case South American monkeys by way
of looking at the genes in living primates was another.
I mean, that was a very different departure for me,

(10:22):
But one I wasn't going to say no to my mentor,
and two it was a great opportunity to learn a
technique that, as it turns out, I didn't end up
pursuing that further, but it placed me in a very
good position to, from a more informed stance, be able

(10:43):
to evaluate the publications of the studies that others were
doing in an area that it was still of real
interest to me. That was the evolution of South American
primates as an adaptive radiation. So you know, principles of
evolution stribology that have been applicable to a variety of

(11:03):
different species in different continents and so on. So it's
all it's all good.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
So since he specialized somewhat in locomotive adaptations and primates
in general, that would explain why maybe you picked up
the idea of the midfoot flexibility and Krantz noticed it
but didn't put the terms on it per se, I think.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Right well, and he didn't characterize the features correctly, and
that was you know, a bit of a misdirection unfortunately.
But if you look in his book Bigfootprints or the
Evidence of bigfoot Sasquatch with the renamed second edition, you
know there's a diagram in there where he tries to

(11:44):
account for that mid tarsal pressure ridge. He didn't, of course,
he didn't recognize it as a mid tarsal pressure ridge.
He recognized it as a pressure ridge, but tried to
explain it as you know, a push off from the
foe foot of a very flat a very flat foot.
But he did not eliminate the the existence of an

(12:11):
arch entirely. He he and and this is why he
had to hypothesize that the toes were very short. You know,
our our toes have shortened remarkably by comparison to chimpanzees
and gorillas, and even in comparison to the intermediate state,

(12:33):
the intermediate links found in some early bipedal hominins like
the Australia Pithesenes, which still had rather long and somewhat
curved pedal digits foot digits of their feet toes.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Jeff, excuse me, what about those tribes that have never
worn shoes? And you say, those guys are those big,
gnarly you know, spread feet and toes.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, they still have have very healthy.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Arches though to leg so the tow short no.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
No, it's it's I mean it's they appear to be
a bit longer because they are a little more extended
and splayed, perhaps, whereas our toes are so compressed from
shoe wear. And you know, typically most modern shoe wearing humans,
their little toe is is curled on its side. Now, thankfully,

(13:23):
shoe wear these days is more sensible than it was
even fifty years ago. You know, the point he showed
toed dress shoes and so forth, very confining footwear. But
and even you know, cowboy boots, there's a little bit
of accommodation there because the boot that has a pointed

(13:44):
toe is usually a longer toe. I mean, it was
a longer toes so you could keep it in your stirrup. Basically,
it was the strategy nowadays that you know, these these
fancy fashionable dress shoes have really law toes and the
pointed toes of the shoe, the pointed tips of which

(14:07):
extend out beyond and so they don't know the toes
aren't crushed into that little conical tip. But nevertheless, no,
it's interesting because when the Victorian era physical anthropologists struck
out to study all the various ethnic diversity that was
out there, they thought that they would find these poor,

(14:31):
unshod native tribes would display very poor foot hygiene, foot conditions,
that they would have fallen arches, that they would have
all kinds of ailments of the joints and so forth,
because they didn't have the benefit of Western supportive footwear.

(14:53):
And of course what they found was just the opposite.
That the human foot responded very well, and the arches
were healthy and were high, the toes were splayed, the
pads pointed down towards the ground like they were supposed to.
They were very much fewer foot ailments amongst these barefoot

(15:14):
tribal peoples than there were amongst the Western Europeans. So
in any case, so Grover was his argument was that
Sasquatch had even shorter toes, which kind of fed into
this image that.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Was the result.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
Of the Patterson Gimlin film site footprint casts that where
the toes looked kind of like peas in the pod.
This is why not to digress too far, but this
is why Renee to Hinden had such trouble with the
tracks from the Blues is because these individuals had sometimes

(15:51):
less soul pad extending up under the toes, as is
a variable trait in human populations as well. So the toes,
in Rene's words, looked like sausages, and he used that
as a very disparaging description, these fake sausage toes.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Nobody likes the sausage party, that's.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, Yes, a bunch of Vienna sausages. When Grover modeled
the human or the sasquatch foot, then he envisioned with
even greater mass, there would be more bending stresses on
these toes as they walked and pushed off, and so
the toes would naturally be even shorter than in the

(16:33):
human foot relative to foot length.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
And that's because he was using the human foot model
of pushing off at the heads of the metatarsals and
the toes as opposed to the entire fore part of the.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Foot exactly exactly, you know. And so when this first,
you know, first, it kind of came to mind as
I was looking at some of these blue mountain tracks
which had fairly long toes and the footprints that I
examined at five points, I've drawn attention to that one
example where the toes have curled remarkably as they flexed,

(17:07):
gripping the mud as it slid, with mud extruding up
between the toes. But you get the profile of the
first and second toe, and that little toe on that
fourteen and a half inch ish foot is as long
as my pinky finger, and that's pretty, you know. So
imagine toes on that foot that are as long as

(17:28):
my fingers on my hand, and combine that with, you know,
the musculature of the lower extremity and something as big
as this creature probably was, and that's a powerful, grasping,
prehensile foot. So then the other thing that kind of
got it going was there were two other things. One

(17:51):
was looking at the Bosbird cripplefoot, because you know, Grover
had actually attempted to do a skeletal construction or inferential
reconstructure outlining on that diagram and on actually etching on
the physical cast his interpretation of the of the foot,
and he had the toes very short. But as I

(18:17):
looked at more details of the flection creases and so forth,
and where the joints would be based on the contours
of the outline of the foot, it didn't work. It
didn't work. You had to have a toe that was
much much longer. And then that combined with those individuals,

(18:39):
particularly some of the examples on the Blue Creek Mountain
trackway that had a very decided flection crease across the
ball of the foot, this split ball that has gotten
you know, various I've actually got this old diagram that
was drawn by Ivan Sanderson where he tried to interpret

(19:01):
and I should publish it as just a short article
because it's of such interesting historical significance. I think as
these investigators tried to grapple with this otherwise inexplicable anatomical characteristic.
But I mean, if you look at your own at

(19:21):
the palm of your hand you have, and you flex
your fingers just a little bit at the knuckle, you
see it throws up a crease across the palm of
your hand where the tissue of the palm extends beyond
that joint up under the proximal filangies the first bones

(19:42):
in your fingers. Well, in the sasquatch tracks as well
as in human footprints as well human feet there's evidence
of that of an extension of that soulpad to varying
degrees up underneath that first bone. In some individuals it

(20:02):
goes almost up to that first interfalangeal joint. Well, when
those toes flex, then they create a crease right across
the soul at the mid ball at the heads of
the metatarsals as they join the digits where your knuckles

(20:22):
the corresponding position of where your knuckles are in your hand.
So in the toes flex, it throws up a crease
just like that. And in fact, if you go and
look at your birth certificate, if you have an inked footprint,
you'll find that you, like almost every human baby has
that flexion crease on its foot when they're born. But
as the arch develops, as the infant starts to walk,

(20:47):
that soulpad fills out some more with more connective tissue
and less baby fat, and you get an elaboration of
the connective tissue under the ball of the foot at
that metatarsal falangel joint, and it fills out, and so
in most people it pretty much disappears.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
God, I was in a store or something.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
I remember I was standing next to the sky or whatever,
and I think we exchanged a few words or whatever,
and I noticed that he had a tattoo of these
two feet on his arms. And I looked at him
and go, well, those aren't human. Those are clearly said,
so you're into sasquatches. And he goes, no, those are
my infants. Those are my baby's feet. And he wasn't
super happy with me, and he didn't exchange many more
words after that either. So but to your point, though,

(21:47):
and actually doctor Krantz made that same point in this
book now that i'm thinking of it.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
About the split ball.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
No, No, about specifically how infant human feet probably more
strongly resemble sasquatch feet.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yes, yes, I think there was talking about the proportions too, particularly.
I'll have to go back and look in a long
time since I've read that, And every time I go
back and reread, I discover something else he said that
I've since forgotten.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
But David Ellis's baby footprint, you authenticated that, right, Jeff.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Well, I would never claim to authenticate, but I mean it.
I'm impressed foremost by the huge heel. It's got an
enormous heel and well developed heel pad already which is
not typical of the most human babies, and so that
that seems quite interesting in itself. So I think there's

(22:43):
a really good possibility. Yeah, that's a good example. We
have others in the collection. I have some of the
the little feet that Paul Freeman investigated that we're well now.
Now the prevenience is little clear to me because I
originally thought that it was at the at d Duck

(23:04):
Springs and was found just just prior to the shooting
of that footage there. But now I'm told to know
it was a different it was an earlier segment.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
That's a different one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
In fact, that that footage right before the most common
version of the Freeman footage is out now that shows
those footprints in the ground that you're referring to. I
believe I've successfully identified those as those same juvenile prints
that you're speaking of that were cast on Gifford Peak.
I believe it's called Gifford Peak in the previous April

(23:38):
if I remember correctly, by the shape of the casts
in the ground drawing, you know, with the redit I
look looking at the copies that I have, you can
identify them as Oh, those are the same individuals those
are the actually those are the same casts. So that
was actually from Gifford Peak the previous ninety two I
think in April, I remember correctly.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Oh okay, all right, Well that's good to know because
with all the you know, with all the discussion about
the subject of the Freeman video scooping up an infant
and in the parting shots there, I had often wondered
if if those were the tracks of the infant that
he had just taken note of prior to going around

(24:20):
to the other side of the of the pond there.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
But definitely could be. But the videos from a few
months earlier, so.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Right, And you're absolutely right. I mean, that's when I
saw that video and realized that they were that he
had taken casts. That was the first thing I did,
is it got the cast out and compared to the video,
and you're you're absolutely right, they are in fact from
that sequence, which is always nice to establish, you know,
to have documentation of the footprints in the ground and

(24:52):
swill as the casts resulting casts.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
So well, speaking of anatomy, I thought, I thought we
could go down a couple other rabbit holes here. Let's
talk about handprints for a minute and Sasquatch handprints, of
course a different than Sasquatch hands are different than humans
in a lot of ways. Shorter, stubby, your looking fingers,
because the webbing is extended, the thumb is in a
different position. It doesn't flex across the palm like ours.

(25:17):
It goes more directly into the ground. Because of these differences,
what behavioral differences can we infer?

Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's a great point because you know, this often comes
up when people are suggesting that the Sasquatch are extremely intelligent.
You know, they must be in order to avoid us.
And then of course there are others who appeal to
other types of experiences to suggest that there's something else

(25:49):
going on that would indicate a higher level of mental ability,
if not human. But they're not quote just aids.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Well, you know, let's since you open the intelligence thing
and we're going to be talking about the hands, let's
also throw in the cranium size and shape into this
discussion so we can have a more well rounded discussion
about this, please.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Okay, Well, in that regard not being privy to first
hand visual observations of Sasquatch cranial proportions, you know, I
can't say a lot, but I've come to a point
where I'm absolutely convinced about the credibility of the Patterson

(26:31):
Gimlin film, and as such, that is admittedly a sample
of one, but nevertheless it is a sasquatch. And what
can we learn from looking at it? And one of
the things that just blows me away is when you
take a robust australopithesene like paranthropists paranthropist boise eye, which

(26:56):
existed in East Africa about to one point eight million two,
about eight hundred thousand years ago in the known fossil
record anyway, and it stood about five to five and
a half feet tall. Was robust. When we say robust austrolipithesenes,

(27:16):
we're talking about their facial cranial adaptations, these heavy jaws,
extremely enlarged molars and premolars and reduced canines for a
more side freeing up a side to side what they
call the phase two of the chewing cycle, the grinding aspect,
with very very thick enamel and very puffy rounded cusps

(27:42):
and crusts on the teeth, so indicating indicative of a
diet of very tough and very hard items. Okay, So anyway,
if you take the we have remarkably complete examples of
crania of this species. And you take one of those
and just scale it to the same absolute size as

(28:07):
Patty and put it up next to her bust, and
sure enough, every single bony landmark from the top of
the head to the receding chin on the jaw blinds up. Now,
you know, that's that's no small point because the you know,

(28:29):
the facial proportions on this thing, this robust astrolopithesene, are
really remarkable. They are an extreme specialization for this what
we call a dual fagius diet dural meaning as you
might expect, like from durabol, a very tough, unyielding diet.

(28:51):
And so you know, some some have compared these robust
austerlopithesenes to quizin arts. They can, you know, really grind
up and handle all kinds of food ite and so
it's it's an extreme adaptation with very deep jaws with
very flaring angles to the to the mandible, a very

(29:13):
prominent cheekbones that that flare forward and why to provide
attachment for the chewing muscles on the side, the massi
muscles that it even has a bit of a crest
on its skulled for increased attachment of the anterior fibers
of the temporalis muscle, which is the second of the

(29:37):
two large, very large principal chewing muscles, the temporalis and
the mass anyway, so point for point, I mean it's
not just a queer coincidence. I mean that correlation suggests
that the sasquatch has a similar type of diet and

(29:58):
has those same extreme craniofacial adaptations.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bobo will be right back after these messages. Yeah, because
the anatomy reflects behavior in some way, I mean, yeah,
it has to of course.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yeah, of course it does. I mean sometimes there are lags,
sometimes there are things that aren't really tightly correlated with
the current behavior, but it's pretty lockstep. I mean, this
is how paleoanthropologists go about reconstructing the anatomy and behavior
in fur behavior for these extinct species is by drawing

(30:43):
analogy to the same correlations that exist in other living species.
And so one of the interesting correlations to this, as
I mentioned, the reduced canines that allows that side to
side grinding. Is it it interesting that the most credible
sightings of sasquatch, where the observer has been privileged to

(31:07):
see the teeth from a gaping smile or an open mouth,
there's usually an absence of projecting canines like you would
see in a bear or in a gorilla or an orangutan,
you know, And so that correlates with the you know,
the fact that that that most witnesses who do see

(31:29):
the teeth comment on the squared off human like appearance
of the teeth without fang like canines projecting. That is
exactly the anatomy that would be correlated with the facial
skeletal adaptations and proportions that that are seemed to be
a present.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
So that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
So in the same way we go from that then
say to the tools. Oh, well, I guess we were
talking about get off on a different branch. We were
talking about the intelligence. And so if you do that
same correlation, that same alignment of the skull, it is

(32:12):
the correlation is valid not only for the facial skeleton,
but for the cranium as well that houses the brain.
And rather than having a massive globular spherical cranium to
accommodate a human proportioned brain. It looks just like the

(32:33):
robust australopithesene in that regard as well. And these robust
australopithesenes were barely you know, bipedal gorillas or gyms in
that regard. Their brain was maybe fifty cubic centimeters ccs
bigger than that for a chimpanzee. So you know, sasquatch

(32:56):
would have an absolutely largeranium because of its more gigantic size.
But nevertheless, the proportion of brain to body mass would
be the same. The encephalization quotient, you know, when you
take a ratio of brain size to body mass, would
be on par with that of the known grade apes

(33:17):
or early hominins like the robust australopitheesenes, which were just
you know, a half step half notch greater. So then
go back to the hand question again, and you pointed
out some of the distinctions. I mean, the limited record
we have of hand prints and casts thereof seem to

(33:38):
consistently indicate a hand that lacks the adaptations associated with opposability,
with that potential for fine precision grip like you use
when you hold a pin or pick up a needle.
You know, that requires the action of opposition, bringing the

(34:02):
pads of the thumb in direct opposition to the pads
of the other digits, particularly the index finger. Obviously, now
those movements, those fine, finely controlled movements, have selected four
specializations of the muscles at the base of the thumb

(34:23):
which give that thumb kind of a drumstick looking appearance.
That's called the theen r pad or the theenar muscles,
And that feature seems to be uniformly absent from the
sasquatch and in fact, instead of the thumb being set
at a ninety degree rotation to the other digits. So

(34:47):
if you look at your hand right now, you flex
your fingers, they cross your palm, but your thumb is
facing ninety degrees across your palm. So when you flex
your fingers, it doesn't flex your thumb. It does not
move in the same orientation that your other fingers does.
It crosses over the palm at a right angle. And

(35:07):
so that set sort of predisposes the thumb for this
opposition positioning. Well, the sasquatch thumb much more like an ape, gorilla,
or chim the thumb isn't rotated nearly so much, and
so when the thumb flex is, it really moves in
parallel to the other digits, and since it doesn't have

(35:30):
the adaptations for that precision grip, you'll notice a flattening
of the palm and a lack of the enlargement of
that drumstick appearance. Those the in are muscles. Now, isn't
it interesting because the hand lacks the very features that
we associate with precision grip, with fine grip, which we

(35:54):
infer as essential to the evolution of tool use, of
the manufacture of stone tools, for example, or other manual
activities associated with other sorts of tool use, with the
use of needle and thread, or you know balls or scrapers, Well,

(36:14):
scrapers are more power grip. And the correlation being is
witnesses don't see sasquatch doing or doing those types of
behaviors or utilizing those tools. Nor do we find an
archaeological record in North America that is attributed to Sasquatch.
I mean, they're certainly not making the arrowhead points that

(36:36):
we find in Native American as a result of Native
American activities.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
So it's just it's really.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's it's it's hard to convey in a brief you know,
expose a the depth of correlation and consistency that that
is present here when when you ask the right questions
and look for the right evident and the things are
remarkably coherent and have you know, provide examples that span

(37:12):
at least a half a century and many from a
time when a lot of these types of things were
only in their early stages of understanding or development in
the thinking of anthropologists of the time. And yet someone
allegedly hoaxed all these things, you know, left this trail

(37:33):
of breadcrumbs that is so remarkably coherent but actually has
anticipated what we now understand.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, well, then I guess we're underestimating the hoaxer is
having such foresighted anthropological models in the future.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Right exactly.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
It's just I mean, this is what really this way
of thinking, in addition to so much other aspects of
the evidence, but this way of thinking is what absolutely
converted me, convinced me, if you will convinced me a
better word, I guess of the Patterson Gimlin film when
you look at it and break it down, some of

(38:10):
the odd combinations of traits that actually anticipated current conventional wisdom,
but which at the time in nineteen sixty seven were
counterintuitive to what was considered conventional wisdom and at the
risk of being redundant. But it's such a prime example

(38:33):
that bears repetition the writings of John Napier, who was
a bonafide primatologist an anatomist. He was a physician and
a trained anatomist. And it's interesting that it's those since
we started off talking about anatomy, that tend to have
a more open mind to some of that anatomical evidence.

(38:54):
I guess it comes through the appreciation of the significance
of that evidence due to the training and experience. But
Napier was very focused on the footprints, and in his book,
which you know, had a lot of negative tones or observations,
he still the final bottom line was he was convinced

(39:18):
there was something out there that sasquatch, something was leaving footprints,
and therefore sasquatch must exist. What exactly it was he
was able to conclusively state. But when it came to
the Patterson Gillen film, he was quite negative, not quite negative.
He had a negative opinion. He did not he could

(39:42):
not endorse it. And yet he was forthright enough to acknowledge.
He really couldn't offer a good rationale for that rejection,
but he said, when he saw that figure on the film,
from the waist up it looked essentially like an ape,
and yet from the waist down it had long legs
like a human or a hominin.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
And a late homonym.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
And he said he just could not conceive of such
a mosaic, such a hybrid of structure occurring in nature.
Because so many anthropologists of that time it was kind
of a all or none that the human condition just
emerged in its complete, perfected form, if you will. And

(40:33):
so isn't it interesting? Though, because shortly after that the
publication of that book, which was in the early seventies
seventy two, I think in the mid to later seventies,
was kind of considered by some to be the golden
age of anthropology, with the discoveries of Australopithegus a Forensis

(40:54):
and Lucy and sort of the first real glimpse beyond
going back to the very beginnings of the emergence of
hominin bipedalism, it was thought at that time, and so
for the first time we had much more complete hip bones.
The pelvies, we had the thigh bones, the femera that

(41:18):
we had knees and so forth, and associated with the
crania of these australopithesenes. And the statements to the popular
press were, isn't this interesting? From the waist up they
look essentially like chimpanzees, but from the waist down they
look like little Harry humans.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Well wait a.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
Minute, that was the very lynchpin that Napier proposed to
negate or to reject the Patterson Gimblin film. And yet
it anticipated those subsequent discoveries that bore out that otherwise
inconceivable a nation of trades, and that interesting.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and
Bogo will be right back after these messages. Well, let's
talk about some of the other anatomy like the pelvis,
for example, and and mid the bent knee gate and
that sort of thing of the PG film. And now

(42:26):
the narrowing of the hips. It has to have something
to do with center of gravity, I would imagine for
such a massive biped kind of otherwise it'd be teeter
tottering back and forth and whatnot. And does that also
probably is where the more inlined inline trackways. The lack

(42:46):
of straddle in the trackways probably comes from, I'm guessing,
is the center of gravity issue. Let's address that and
talk about that a little bit and how that ties
into like the bent knee gate as a shock absorber
sort of thing, and the high leg lift in the
swing phase of the gates and things.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Sure, okay, so let's start with the pelvis then.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, there's a lot there. I'm sorry I throw so
much at you once.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, we'll just work our way down the limb. And
the pelvis has gotten a lot of a lot of
sort of misdirection, miss misinformation. The tendency has always been
to compare us to our closest neighbors and assume then

(43:31):
that the intermediate taxa were somehow also intermediate in in anatomy.
And so the chimp has this very modified pelvis with
these high blades of the ilium, the you know, the
hip bones essentially the up on the ridges of the hips,

(43:54):
not the hip joint. But in a chimp, they are
are elongated, tall and still very narrow, but they're very tall,
and they face front to back so that the muscles,
the gluteal muscles that attach on the back of those
blades are acting simply as retractors of the hip. They

(44:19):
extend and extenders of the hip. So when you're climbing
up a tree, or when you're walking, you know on
all fours, you don't worried about balance. Then they weren't
to draw the hip back, draw the thigh back as
the hip is extended and you're walking forward, all right.
So the thought was then that that had to be

(44:40):
modified in order to become bipeedle. Well, as it turns
out now, which it should have been self evident, it
really was, but sometimes it just got lost. Gymps have
been evolving over the same period of time since the
divergence from a last shared common ancestor maybe in different

(45:00):
ways that they have been involving, and they have evolved
these remarkable specializations for arm hanging. They've experienced a shortening
of the lower back, the lumbar spine, and this elongation
of these of these hip bones, and obviously the greater
emphasis on the forelimbs, so their forelimbs are actually longer

(45:25):
than their hind limbs. And so but now as we
as the fossil record, you have to remember that chips
and guerrillas are themselves relic populations that do not reflect
the totality of ape evolution. We have over well over
one hundred different species of extinct eight that have been

(45:47):
discovered in the past half century, and they don't often
get as much press, you know, as the human ancestors.
But one thing that has come out of that is
that some of these also sort of dabbled in bipedalism,
maybe not a fully committed bipedalism on the ground, but
because they spent time climbing and standing and reaching overhead

(46:10):
for resources, their bodies with that tailless torso and had
a modified, more generalized pelvis that was less like a
chimp than it was similar to our own. And so
the the emergence of the bipedal hominins that then committed

(46:33):
to walking on the ground really probably really didn't have
to change their pelvis all that much. Now, as far
as narrowing, the only there really hasn't been a trajectory
of narrowing so much as it's it's the lack of
sexual dimorphism, the lack of differences between the genders that

(46:56):
we see in humans, which is entirely the result of
our big brains a female pelvis has to have a
broader outlet in order to accommodate a human infant with
a relatively large brain by comparison to an ep like

(47:16):
a chimper gorilla. This is why some of the statements
that were made about the PG film by the experts
of the time are so inane and so silly in hindsight.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
They should have.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Been recognized as such at the time. But one of
the commentators made the remark, isn't it silly, you know,
the hoaxers. It's clearly a man in a furst suit.
It walks like a man, but they've added breasts, so
you've got this ridiculous combination of a female and male features. Well,

(47:51):
now wait a minute again, the only reason a human
female walks like a human female is because of the
wider breadth of the hips to accommodate the large brain.
Infant sasquatch, as we've just discussed earlier, have a small brain.
They have a brain that's not much bigger than a
chimps or gorillas, and so females wouldn't have white hips.

(48:14):
Females would have a pelvis that essentially looks just like
a male sasquatch pelvis, and so a female sasquatch like Patty,
even though she sports breasts to nurse her offspring, has
a pelvis that doesn't look much different than her male
counterpart would, and she would walk like a man. And

(48:36):
this comes into the next point you made. When the
commitment to terrestrial bipedalism was made, in order to help
balance the torso over not three limbs or two limbs,
but one at a time, there were some changes that pelvis.

(48:56):
That shorter pelvis, not necessarily narrower, but shorter. The blades
instead of facing just front to back, curled around to
the sides. So now the smaller what we call the
lesser glue teles, the gluteous minimus, and medius, especially the medias,
are on the sides, and so instead of pulling the

(49:17):
leg back the lower limb the thigh back retracting it,
they balance the torso over the support limb. You can
test this out just next time you stand up and
take a step or two, put your hand down right
on the side of your hip, and as you lift
one leg, you'll feel the muscles on the opposite side

(49:39):
on the support limb flex, keeping that pelvis and torso
from dropping to the unsupported side, you know, like a
drunken soldier. Well, just think about the way a chimpanzee
walks on two legs. That characteristic and actors try to
emulate that whenever they don an eight suit, And it's

(50:00):
that characteristic kind of arms out like a tightrope walker
and swinging the torso back and forth in a swaying
motion over the alternating limbs in order to balance the
pel or the torso over the support limb anyway. So
one of the ways to address that, in addition to

(50:22):
the reorganization of the pelvis, is to angle the thigh
in towards the midline, so your base of support is
already closer to the center of mass than otherwise. So
when we walk, instead of a wide splayed gate with
our feet apart, we place. You know, it's not as

(50:45):
extreme as a model walking down a catwalk, you know,
with it where they literally almost cross their feet over
in front of the others. But it's closer to that.
And you find too when you take on a heavy load.
Next time you're backpacking with a heavy backpack, notice the
way you modify your gate a little bit. And if

(51:07):
you're at all experienced, you do this intentionally, whereas you
do tend to walk a little more tightrope because you're
bringing the center or bringing your line or a point
of support more directly under the center of mass, and
you don't have to utilize the muscular effort quite as
much to balance your helvis and torso over that in

(51:29):
any case, So then you talked about the compliant gate.
Humans have adapted, are adopted of a manner of walking
that maximizes the step length and takes advantage of that

(51:49):
rigid longitudinal relatively rigid longitudinal large and so together with
the elongation of of our legs are lower extremities. We
reach out with a very extended limb and come down
with a heel strike and then transfer onto that supporting foot.

(52:12):
But that that extends our our step length. And you know,
over a long period of walking, and that even if
you've only gained a couple of inches, you multiply that
by hundreds of thousands of steps and you've reduced significantly
the number of individual steps you've had to take to

(52:32):
cover that that ground. But as a result of that
extended limb, we have a bit of a jar when
we when you know jolt, when when our heel strikes
the ground when it's called the heel strike versus the
toa and and because of our art, we have two
points of peak pressure beneath the foot, one at the

(52:54):
heel strike, and then as you know, the full foot
is in contact, the heel comes up. And now now
the point of contact has shifted to the ball of
the foot, to the metatarsal heads because of that arch,
and there's another peak pressure point concentrated in that small
surface area. As we push off ultimately with our big toe, well,

(53:19):
you increase body mass considerably, and those peak plant pressures
are something to be avoided. And so one way is
to not have an arch which differentially concentrates pressure under
those limited points of contact, and don't have a heel

(53:39):
strike where you where you're you know, you're actively limiting
the surface area to absorb all of that weight, that
and that force, you know, that accelerating force through a
small area of tissue. Walk in such a way that
the whole foot comes in contact.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
That's interesting because that's what I was going to be
my next question, but you've already addressed it. Based on
the footprint cast evidence, I'm not seeing a lot of
really deep toe, I mean, are heel impressions, which indicates
to me, along with witness sighting reports of this sort
of flapping sound that sometimes they hear with sasquatches running
through the area or across cement or something like that. Yeah,

(54:22):
I've often thought that perhaps they come down rather flat
footed as opposed to a heel strike, because you know,
five hundred pounds of weight coming down on a heel
every single time would do a real number to their
heel bones, I would imagine.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Okay, I was just going to say, this is something
that Krantz kind of explores in his book where he's
talking about the noticeable breadth to length ratios that are
distinct for sasquatch, much greater than human and he points
out that when you allow for that greater breadth and

(54:58):
the increase surface contact by having a flat foot, the
surface area, you know, placing the foot more flatly on
the ground, you your pressure per unit area of the
foot isn't much different than the theoretical isn't much different

(55:20):
than what is observed for the human foot, which is,
you know, right there at the tolerance levels of the
of the tissue of the skin and connective tissue fatty
tissue and bone. So you can address the increased forces anatomically,
but you can also address them behaviorally. And that's that's

(55:43):
what you were talking about with placing the foot more
flatly initially instead of a decided heel strike, which you,
as you correctly point out, seems to be the evidence
of that seems to be completely absent, largely absent from
the fossil record or excuse me, the footprint track record.

(56:04):
In addition, you can soak up some of that impact
force with the tendons and ligaments in the joints of
the ankle and the knee and the hip. And this
is where the compliant or flexed jointed gait comes into play.
In the biomechanical literature, it's referred to, kind of in

(56:26):
an informal sense as a Groucho walk. Now, most of
the younger generation don't even know who Groucho Marx is,
let alone having seen him on the movie screen.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Which is a travesty, by the way, a huge It's
a sign of the downfall of our civilization in my opinion,
to not know who Groucho Marx is, that's right.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
But Graucho Marx had this funny walk and you know,
he had this big bristly mustache and round glasses and
a big cigar that you twiddle there, and he leaning
way forward and walk with a bent at the waist
and non flexed hips and knees and so anyway, this

(57:10):
is what's called the compliant gate. And there have been
very systematic studies done using force plate to collect data
of ground reaction forces to show that you can reduce
the impact forces which are called ground reaction forces, the
forces the ground is pushing back against the force that

(57:32):
you're imposing on it, just the way that description works,
by upwards of eighteen twenty percent. That's that's pretty significant
when you start talking about, you know, the magnitude of
forces of a big seven hundred pound paddy walking across
the sandbar.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
So, so walking with a compliant gate combined with the
broader foot and actually probably larger foot for the overall size.
I mean, some people have looked at patting and say
that our feet looked kind of oversize. Well they've probably
well some of that is optical illusion due to the

(58:11):
overexposure of the film. But there is something to be
said for the length to stature ratio.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
I say, that same they say that same thing about
Homo floresiensis about had much larger feet than its stature indicated.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Yeah, So see, I think all of that the unique
human condition really didn't emerge until our skeletons remarkably lightened
in in weight and mass, and we went from an
elongated heel that gave greater leverage to a very short

(58:50):
heel length projecting behind the ankle joint for a speed lever.
So a little bit of displacement of that proximal or
that yeah, that proximal part of the ankle or the
heel bone would translate into a very rapid movement of
the distal and which is an adaptation for running. We

(59:13):
are our skeleton, our long legs are you know, a
lot of the discussion about the changes in the cranial
base and in our proportions of upper extremity to lower extremity,
and and you know, just the more light, the lightning,
the grassilization of the skeleton. These are adaptations for endurance

(59:36):
walking and running. And we're quite different sasquatch has evolved
in a very different way.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
I mean, it muscles its way.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
Up and down those mountain sides and you know, it's
probably capable of bursts of speed, just like a gorilla
or a chimp. All I was just looking up the
other day because someone was asking a silver backed gorilla
can attain bursts of speed up to twenty five miles
per hour, which is that's a world class sprinter speed.

(01:00:08):
But it can't sustain it obviously for a lot. Neither
can a world class sprinter sustain that for more than
the one hundred yard dash. But the long distance runners,
marathon runners don't run at that pace, and I don't
think a sasquatch would be capable either it doesn't have
those adaptations, or a gorilla, but sasquatch would be much

(01:00:29):
more capable than would a gorilla. And so you know,
feats of distance, an overnight trek across a gap between
forest fragments would be something that you know sasquatch could undertake.
I think that's probably why sometimes we get sign or

(01:00:49):
sightings in otherwise odd places, is because there could be
a like Krantz used to refer to rogue mails who
are breaking out from their natal territory. They've been forced
out by the resident male, dominant male, and they have
to find their own turf and their own females attract

(01:01:11):
their own females, So sometimes they strike out through less
desirable habitat in order to find a place of their own.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah, I just kind of cook over that terrain during
the night when there are fewer eyes out there to
see them, and they feel safe under the cover of darkness.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
One of the things that that has given me a
greater appreciation of just the muscle mass that sasquatches must
have is doing exactly what you mentioned, which is experimenting
about experimenting with my own gait while backpacking. You know,
if I have like a forty pound pack, you know,
on my back, that's a significant addition to my own weight,
and I do find myself leaning forward slightly and just

(01:01:54):
for you know, just for laughs, I kind of adopt
the compliant gait, and it sure makes a big difference
on the impact, especially going downhill, and there's some degree up,
mostly downhill. But I'll tell you, I am sore in
the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
All that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
It's just an incredible burden on my feeble little muscles.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
So sure, exactly, Well, that's and that's it, because you
can no longer simply rely on the joint locking mechanisms
or the passive tension in the ligaments and joint capsules.
The tendons can store some elastic energy. Especially see one

(01:02:42):
of the very human like characteristics is is very well
developed Achilles tendon, the calcaneal tendon, and it's kind of
like it's not exactly like that. We compare it to
a bungee cord, that connective tissue. Within the way it's
arranged within the tendon, it allows for a little bit

(01:03:06):
of stretch and there's some elastic tissue in there as
well that helps it to rebound to its original shape.
But they have found, you know, that these these tendons
can return a significant fraction of the kinetic energy once
they're loaded back into the system in propulsion.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
The extreme example of this mechanism is the big giant
red kangaroos in Australia, which once they get up to speed,
you know, they're basically springing on these relying on these
on these tendons and the counterbalance the cantilever rather cantilever

(01:03:48):
mechanism of their torso and tail, that stiff tail sticking
back there over the hip each time they hit the ground.
The tail tends to come down in the to also
tends to come down, which loads all of the ligaments
and tendons in the back and the spine and you know,
big tendons of the muscles for the tail. And then

(01:04:12):
that tends to upon recoil, lift the kangaroo up again,
you know. And and so the force necessary to generate
the lift for that next step, that next spring rather
is is in part contributed by the recoil of these

(01:04:34):
ligamented structures. So the point is that it's interesting. You
look at at Paddy, you look at a chimpanzee, and
they have almost no real significant tendon, and what is
there is a broad much more what we call appo neurotic,
a broad tendon that spanning between the calf musculature and

(01:04:54):
the heel. But if you look at Patty, she's kind
of intermediate between a chimpanzee and a human. She has
a massive broad tendon in the area. The heads of
the gastroc nemus are discernible, and they're long, but they're
shorter than they are in a chimpanzee. They're a bit

(01:05:16):
longer than they are in the human. And the length well,
when we say the length I'm talking about the length
of the fibers that constitute the two gastroc heads. So
if you're relying on those muscles to kind of load
the tendon, they don't need to be very long. The

(01:05:36):
chimps are long because they move their ankle through such
a huge range of motion compared to ours when they're
climbing up and down trees, and so the muscle fiber
has to shorten through that range of motion. But if
the range of motion is greatly restricted, and the adaptation
is to load the tendin so that when the four

(01:05:59):
foot hits the ground, see, it would otherwise stretch that tendon.
I almost ruptured my tenton just to show you the
kind of the principle, you know. I was out we
were collecting firewood, and rather than using axe as we
were and saws, we were just gathering up the dead
fall and were breaking it on rocks or leaning across

(01:06:20):
something and stomping on it. Well, when you do that,
you need to stomp so that your ankle is right
over the top, so that the force coming down through
your leg goes straight through the well like a dummy.
Was being a little careless, and when I stomped I
caught the branch with the tip the end of my
boot out of my toes and it flexed my foot

(01:06:44):
up really forcefully, and oh man, it pulled my achilles
tendon and I had a Charlie horse like you wouldn't believe,
and I thought I had a vaults. I mean, that's
how you can a volts tear tear the tendon. Either
it either it fails internally in the fibers slip and
then you get this big swollen contusion and potential hematoma.

(01:07:10):
Or it literally tears. It can pull it right free
from the heel bone and sometimes even tears some of
the bone that those fibers are embedded within, away from
the heel bone. So I was limping for several days.
I immediately put some ice on it. Thankfully we had
some ice in one of the ice tests and I
could put some ice on of it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
And no martial arts classes in your background, so well, yeah, not.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
It just took at one moment of a of a
misdirected the stomp, not aimed quite placed, quite properly, and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Man, well you know what, we have a lot, We
have a lot more questions that at least I have
a lot more questions to ask. I think Bob has
been more of a student today and just like sitting
back listening as I as I as have I, but
don't Why don't we go in and close down the
main session. We can go to the member section and
then I can ask you some of the other questions

(01:08:03):
that I have. Are you okay with that, Bobo?

Speaker 4 (01:08:05):
Yeah, I want to hear what the latest stuff's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Well yeah, well yeah, why don't we go and do that.
We'll save that for the members section. So everybody else
out there listening, I really appreciate you listening. If you
do want to hear us, continue this conversation with doctor Meldrum,
or continue a conversation with any of our guests. Every
single week, you can become a member. Just go to
Big and Beyond podcast dot com and click the membership
link and I'll bring you right there and you get

(01:08:29):
an extra maybe half hour forty five minutes of conversation
every single week. And I don't know, reviews are in.
It seems to be a big hit. People are enjoying it,
so maybe you're missing out on something. So Jeff, go
ahead and stick around with us for a moment and Bobo,
Why don't you close down this episode here?

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
All right, folks, Well, thanks for joining us for episode
two hundred and our special guest today, doctor Jeff Meldrium.
We appreciate him showing up. We'll see I guess next
time at the three hundredth episode. Okay, until then, everyone,
thanks for joining us and keep it squat.

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
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(01:09:25):
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